


a wary beginning

by ConvenientAlias



Category: Vicious - V. E. Schwab
Genre: Developing Friendships, Gen, Prison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2019-01-04 09:17:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12165987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConvenientAlias/pseuds/ConvenientAlias
Summary: "Mitch hovers a hand over his side, not willing to touch the wound. He forces himself not to tremble—Victor has a predatory sort of look in his eyes again, the sort he always wears when he’s about to do something out of this world. Whether Mitch touches the wound or favors it for the next week, if Victor decides it would be fun he can make it scream with more pain than when the actual attacker sliced it open. There’s really nothing Mitch can do about that, not if he doesn’t want to make Victor mad."Or, the one where Mitch isn't used to Victor just yet.





	a wary beginning

After the confrontation in the cafeteria, Mitch's sense of discomfort around Victor fades away.

It should set Mitch at ease. And in a way it does. Although he’d been barely aware of the pain at the fringes of his perception, it made him tenser for a while, more irritable, warier of Victor and warier of other threats as well. As the pain eases he can feel his body relaxing—not just more than it has in the past three days but more than it has in a long time, longer than he can calculate. He feels as if he has run a marathon and is now finally able to sit in peace and catch his breath.

This is unnerving enough, because it makes him realize just how much Victor was messing with him before, and on a physical level. He’s used to mind games, and he’s used to blunt, direct physical attacks, but this sinister level of physical and mental manipulation he does not fully understand.

The naïve part of him thinks, _Why did he do that? Why did he start hurting me when he first arrived—we hadn’t even met then._ But of course the smarter part understands in prison the default is fear and control, not trust. Mitch started protecting Victor on Day One. But Victor didn’t know that was going to happen coming in. He didn’t know Victor at all.

It was the smart thing to do, however he’d managed it. But Mitch can’t help but feel a little offended at the time he spent protecting Victor until now. He’d felt noble about it, helping the helpless, in a way. Now he realizes he was protecting a tiger who had a claw pressed against his throat the entire time.

Nevertheless, the way he acted towards Victor does seem to have done some good. Victor actually talks to him now, and he has taken away the sense of buzzing discomfort that used to keep him at a distance. So Mitch has somehow earned his trust, though he suspects Victor learning a little about Mitch’s reputation has something to do with it. Victor seems like the type to have tools, not friends.

Which is fine. Mitch can stop worrying about him, then, if he’s one of the big fish rather than a little minnow bound to get carried away in the current of Mitch’s bad luck. He can relax in more ways than one.

* * *

 

He at first does not realize the extent of Victor’s abilities. The incident in the cafeteria tells him that they are extensive, and can cause acute pain as well as vague unease. And of course there are similar incidents that follow, each accompanied by men screaming and falling to the floor and an increase in Victor’s frightening reputation. But he assumes this is it. Victor is a cold sadist who doesn’t care who he hurts as long as he gets people to do what he wants, and the power set suits him. It’s a relief to Mitch that Victor hasn’t used it on him again.

Then one day Mitch gets into a fight. It’s the first in a while, since Victor and Mitch’s combined rep is currently enough to keep all but the most bold at bay. It ends with the opponent in solitary and Mitch getting six stitches in his side. Which is basically nothing, but still not exactly pleasant either.

Victor is sitting on his bed when Mitch gets back from the infirmary, but he immediately gets up. He looks Mitch over with a critical eye.

Mitch holds still. None of his stitches, he knows, are visible under his shirt. He wonders if Victor will ask him to take off the shirt so he can have a look, as that is clearly what has him interested. It’s been a while since he last looked at Mitch so analytically.

“Where does it hurt?” Victor asks him at last.

Mitch hovers a hand over his side, not willing to touch the wound. He forces himself not to tremble—Victor has a predatory sort of look in his eyes again, the sort he always wears when he’s about to do something out of this world. Whether Mitch touches the wound or favors it for the next week, if Victor decides it would be fun he can make it scream with more pain than when the actual attacker sliced it open. There’s really nothing Mitch can do about that, not if he doesn’t want to make Victor mad.

It would be a stupid thing for Victor to do though. After all, he seems to like Mitch, or at least like Mitch on his side. And while he also likes to rule by fear, he hasn’t caused Mitch discomfort since that third day, and Mitch likes to think they’re on firmer ground by now.

Victor nods and turns away. Mitch breathes out a sigh of relief. No pain increase. His side doesn’t hurt any more than it did a minute ago.

It is a moment before he realizes his side doesn’t actually hurt at all.

Startled, he looks over at Victor, whose back is still turned. He touches his side. Nothing. He prods at it experimentally, once, twice. Eyebrows raised half up his forehead, he raises his hand and slaps down on his side, hard.

He doesn’t feel a thing. But as he stares down at his side, he sees a red stain form on his shirt.

“You’ve broken the stitches,” Victor observes. He shakes his head.

And with a pang the pain returns to Mitch’s side. He gasps slightly. It’s not a huge amount, but more than it was before. He glances at Victor accusingly, and Victor shrugs.

“It’s not my fault you hurt yourself.”

Actually it is, since Mitch would hardly have been slapping his side if…well, he’d somehow assumed he’d been healed, but that clearly isn’t what it is.

“If you want me to take away the pain again later, I can,” Victor says, sitting down again. “But you should get used to the injury first. I should have warned you.” He doesn’t apologize, but Mitch is already surprised enough at his humility.

“I didn’t know you could take away pain,” Mitch says.

Victor smiles a twisted smile. “There isn’t usually cause for it in anyone else.”

They don’t discuss it in any depth. It will be quite a while before Victor is willing to tell Mitch much about his past after all, that or his odd abilities. But later in the week, when Mitch’s stitches have been taken out, Victor takes away the pain again, and Mitch’s side does not hurt again even after it is already healed up.

He isn’t sure quite what to make of it. Once again, it should make Victor seem less frightening, friendlier or at least more human, that he is able to take pain away as well as give it, and that he is willing to do so for Mitch. It should make Mitch feel like they have become closer.

And once again, he can only feel a little bit more alienated. That a man has the ability to take away pain more effectively than a painkiller and yet he chooses to cause it instead—well, it should not be surprising in here. And it should especially not be surprising from the likes of chilly Victor Vale.

Still it’s not exactly endearing. Mitch reminds himself: even if he doesn’t feel physical discomfort around Victor anymore, and even if Victor seems to have accepted him as an ally, this is not a good man. He’ll have to keep his guard up.

And yet, every time Mitch comes out of a fight with a cut or even a bruise and Victor takes away the pain, Mitch can’t help but feel a little flattered. Because as far as he knows, Victor doesn’t take away pain from anyone else. He only reminds himself to think back to that first confrontation in the cafeteria. Victor had asked him if he thought protecting Victor was a waste of his talents. He hadn’t acted as if he thought helping another, helping a comrade was good enough in itself. No, he saw Mitch’s efforts as an attempt at alliance, and as an investment. The way he helps Mitch now is an investment too. Mitch wonders what, just what, he expects to get in return.

* * *

 

 

Things continue like this. A little wary, a little unsure, but always balanced. Victor’s influence in the prison grows until even the guards begin to shy away from him, and there are few in the prison who want to pick a fight with him—and those who do are dissuaded by others, or later shown the errors of their ways. In some ways Mitch has never had it this easy before. He does some work in keeping himself and Victor afloat, but far less than he would have expected. Victor is the muscle of this two-man operation, whatever operation it is they’re pulling, and he acts as the brains as well. Mitch isn’t sure quite what he is, except that these days he’s hardly ever in pain.

Hardly ever relaxed either, and always a little on edge, and a little concerned that his nerves will fail to alert him of some vital development like someone shanking him in the ribs, but it’s a trade he’s willing to make.

Victor has nightmares, sometimes. It’s not surprising. Mitch thinks everyone here has their own horrors. He doesn’t know what Victor’s are, but he has a certain instinct that tells him a painful ability like Victor’s surely was born in pain as well. Guided by a second instinct, that such abilities did not sprout up on their own.

He doesn’t ask Victor about his powers except for practical use: _Did you do something to this man? Is that why he is so afraid of us lately?_ or _I’ve another black eye, can you give me a hand?_ Victor is always willing to answer the practical questions. Maybe he would answer questions about his past with equal readiness, but Mitch isn’t sure he wants to find out.

So things continue like this for a while.

Until.

One night, Mitch does the foolish thing. He hears Victor tossing and turning, groaning from some night terror, and like an idiot he gets up and goes to shake him. He touches Victor on his shoulder, lightly nudging him…

…and suddenly, ever ache and bruise and scrape on his body, every healed scar and every weary muscle, suddenly throbs harder than they ever have before. It hurts more than being cut, more than being hit. And it just keeps going and going and going and…

…STOPS. He falls to the ground. His throat feels raw but he realizes as he struggles to his feet that he never screamed. The other men usually screamed, when Victor hurt them. But Mitch didn’t. Instinct, again. He isn’t sure why. It wasn’t bravado, and it’s not that he’s too proud to scream in pain.

The pain is gone now. As if it never existed.

Victor pulls him to his feet and manhandles him over to his bed. Sitting down next to him, he says, “You shouldn’t touch me when I’m sleeping.”

“I’m sorry,” Mitch says. Scrape scrape on his throat.

“No,” Victor says. “You meant well.” He stands and turns away. “I can’t control myself when I’m asleep. Usually no one is there so it doesn’t matter.”

Usually, for Victor, is solitary.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Victor says. “Don’t touch me while I’m sleeping again.”

Mitch nods. He doesn’t think he’ll be tempted.

* * *

 

Except, weirdly, he is.

He knows it would hurt. He knows how much, intimately well now.

But he wonders, is that the pain Victor feels when he sleeps?

And he wonders, _Why?_

* * *

 

And one day he asks. “How can you do these things?”

It’s already months into their acquaintanceship (friendship? Eh, maybe). Victor gives him a long look. But it’s more of a look that wonders why it took Mitch this long to ask than a look that condemns him for asking.

“Do you know what an EO is?”

And that’s almost insulting. “I figured that much out on my own. But how?”

“A near death experience,” Victor says. “That’s how all EOs are made. I suppose that’s not common knowledge.” He stares off into the distance. “Did you know I’m a scientist? I was going to get my doctorate.”

He didn’t, but it’s not surprising.

“So I nearly died. No, I did die,” Victor says. “We went about it very scientifically though. So I came back. You could say it all went as planned.”

He seems to think he is explaining things well, but Mitch is getting basically nothing out of this except that things with Victor are about as messed up as he thought.

One part confuses him in particular. “We?”

Victor gives him a sharp look. He does not elaborate.

Not until weeks later, when he tells Mitch the whole story drily and succinctly, in a way that is clearly rehearsed. He keeps his face neutral and cold while he talks about electrocution, obsession and manslaughter. Except when he talks about the betrayal of Eli Cardale.

He doesn’t say, then, that he plans to get revenge, break out of here and stick a knife in Cardale’s heart. He doesn’t have to. Mitch knows.

And he knows, with a shiver of realization, what it is Victor wants him for.

He doesn’t really object. Nothing personal against Cardale, but he doesn’t sound like a good person either, not someone Mitch feels the need to protect. And while Victor still has that edge to him, which makes Mitch doubt whether he should protect him either, it can’t be helped. He’s gotten in the habit of thinking of them as allies, almost as friends by now. He somehow wants to have Victor’s back, and to prove he can do a better job of it than this Cardale man, this traitor.

Maybe Victor’s trained him, domesticated him by taking away his pain little by little, like a game of carrot and stick. But somehow Mitch wants to return the favor, take away a little of Victor’s pain if he can, the residual ache of betrayal and loss. Then, he thinks, Victor will be able to relax the way he can, and maybe finally let down his guard a little. He can’t imagine what that would look like, but he thinks he wants to find out.

**Author's Note:**

> I really love the book Vicious. And I was glad to see that it's a fandom on AO3, even if there are only a couple fics. Means people out there like it as much as I do, I guess.  
> Victor and Eli's relationship is the center of the book, but I felt like Mitch was an equally interesting foil to Victor. He provides the point of view of a somewhat normal person caught in the crossfire, but also an ally to Victor, someone who actually has a level of loyalty to him. I thought it was nice that Victor had actual friends despite his moral gray-ness, people who he cared about (and not in an obsessive way like he used to care about Eli). And I wanted to play around with Mitch as the outsider a little-I wish we could have seen more of what happened between Mitch and Victor in prison.  
> Ultimately, though, I don't know enough about prison life to write good prison fic! So this piece doesn't have a lot of the action or the drama that Victor's rise to power in the prison probably entailed, and zero details about the breakout. It's just about Mitch and Victor, and getting to know each other. I hope you enjoyed.  
> Comments and kudos are much appreciated! Or check me out on tumblr at convenientalias.


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